Th e Treasury controllers stood fast on Hawtrey’s main theoretical principle: credit was “unruly,” or “a peculiarly unstable and sensitive phenomenon,” as Blackett wrote in a note to Chamberlain. Th is theory had a weighty policy implication. Credit’s lack of selfregulation and its constant expansionary tendencies required “national control” over its supply (Hawtrey 1919, 50). Hence, rather than a handsoff monetary policy, British experts wholeheartedly endorsed monetary management through the manipulation of the bank rate in order to achieve the desired economic “equilibrium” (Hawtrey 1919a, 24).

Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, loc. 981